Well water has natural chemicals and minerals therein which are undesirable for human consumption. Water provided from a centralized water treatment source has synthetic treatment chemical residuals and byproducts therein which are also undesirable for human consumption. The advantages of removing the undesired components of well water and centrally treated water have long been recognized, and several products are available for domestic use to assist in removing the undesirable components.
The most popular commercially available filtration product is a filtration cartridge attached to or made a part of the faucet. These filtration cartridges generally include mesh screens, paper filtration walls and a small quantity of activated carbon. These cartridges do provide some beneficial filtration results but are subject to certain limitations.
In this regard, the filtration cartridge has a limited life cycle, is inconvenient to use and has a limited filtration effect because of its small size and the relatively fast water flow rate through the same. With respect to the limited life cycle, the cartridge filters can remove many different bacteria from the water, with these bacteria then feeding on the organics present in the cartridge. This organic feeding allows the bacteria to live, grow and multiply in and on the screens and activated carbon of the cartridge. This bacteria colony count on the effluent side of the cartridge unit can rather quickly become high, particularly if the associated faucet remains idle for several days. These bacteria in the cartridge units may then be reintroduced into effluent water passing through and from the cartridge which is an undesirable result because of the potentially deleterious effect to humans and the reduction in quality of water obtained in any event. This phenomena of undesirable bacteria living and breeding in the cartridge filter system rquires the filtration cartridge to be frequently replaced for proper operation at added expense and inconvenience to the home owner. This inconvenience results from the necessity of shutting off the water, relieving the water pressure, removing the old cartridge, installing a new cartridge and restoring water service in order to replace an improperly functioning filtration cartridge. This inconvenience has the natural effect of making the homeowner less prone to change the cartridge filter and less likely to follow the cartridge filter manufacturer's recommendations as to frequency of change.
Another filtration system available is a product known as the Hurley Water System. This system includes a separate lined tank having an activated carbon filtration bed contained therein. The lined tank has a top water port and a bottom water port. In normal service use of the Hurley system, a filler hose extends from the faucet to the bottom port to force water up through the filtration bed and then through the upper port for use. The Hurley filtration bed can be backwashed by connecting the filler hose from the faucet to the top port. In the backwash mode, hot water passes through the filler hose, down through the filtration bed and then out the bottom port. The Hurley system has several advantages over the faucet filtration cartridges described above in that a larger activated carbon filtration bed is provided and the filtration bed can be backwashed. This backwashing with hot water removes some of the contaminants and bacteria remaining in the bed from previous use and reorients the granulated bed to reopen flow channels. However, the Hurley system is subject to several disadvantages.
In that regard, the Hurley system includes a separate lined tank which must be handled by the homeowner and must be positioned on a counter top for use taking away valuable counter top space and detracting from household aesthetics. Moreover, the use of the Hurley system requires the homeowner to make the hose manipulations and installations described above for both normal service use and for backwashing the filtration bed. The inconvenience of this manipulation and installation to the homeowner may make the homeowner less prone to backwash the filter with the frequency preferred.